The FBI refused to confirm or deny the existence of an inquiry earlier this week. Reeves has declined to discuss the issue further.

"My lawyer says I really can't talk about it," he said yesterday.

Mayor's MasterCard

The week also saw a heated struggle between the mayor and the Chronicle, which reported last Thursday that Reeves had declined to account for more than 275 expenses he charged on his city-issued MasterCard during a 13-month period.

In a rebuttal issued Tuesday night, Reeves gave an account of his expenses in November 1993, which had been detailed in a Chronicle graphic, "Out on the town with Mayor Ken Reeves."

More than 140 of Reeves' supporters--most of them African-Americans--rallied outside City Hall Monday, charging the Chronicle with racially biased reporting.

Although a phone number listed on a rally flyer is the same as that of the mayor's re-election campaign, Reeves denies any involvement in the organization of the rally.

Meanwhile, city officials have called for greater accountability.

"I think the city is at fault for failing to establish proper procedures for the filing of expense accounts," Duehay said. "There has been a very loose way of handling these matters."

The councillor said supervision of city-issued credit cards--which are granted to the mayor, city manager and school department superintendent--has never been strict.

"We must not subject him, the first African-American mayor in the state of Massachusetts, to requirements that are different from requirements that have been forced on everybody else," Duehay said.

CCA leaders called earlier this week for a full investigation into the charges.

"It has not been clear enough, at least not to us, what rules the city officials thought they were following, whether there were regulations, whether a credit card could be used, what were the spending limits," Priscilla J. McMillan, CCA vice president, said last night.

Tax Inquiry

Adding to the spate of controversies, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue (DOR) announced Tuesday that it has no record of the mayor's 1992 state income tax returns.